Decode the central environmental protection inspector
The Central Environmental Protection Inspector changed the traditional environmental supervision mode in China from inspecting enterprises to supervising government. Environmental protection inspectors emphasize that "the party and government share the same responsibility" and "one post and two responsibilities", which means that local party committees accept supervision together with the government, and the inspection results are an important basis for the assessment, evaluation and appointment of leading cadres.
China Newsweek reporter/Xu Tian
Environmental protection is a hot word in recent years. Among them, the central environmental protection inspector group, known as the "environmental protection imperial envoy", is undoubtedly the most concerned. "Carry out central environmental protection inspectors and seriously investigate and deal with illegal cases" was written into the 2018 Government Work Report.
Since the pilot project of environmental protection inspectors in Hebei Province was launched in December 2015, the Central Environmental Protection Inspector Group conducted inspections in another 30 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) in four batches in July and November 2016 and April and August 2017, achieving full coverage of inspectors in 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) across the country.
In the first round, the central environmental protection inspector filed a total of 29,000 cases to punish enterprises, with a fine of about 1.43 billion yuan; 1,518 cases were investigated and 1,527 people were detained; Interviewed 18,448 party and government leading cadres and held 18,199 accountable.
In the past, the Ministry of Environmental Protection also took the lead in environmental monitoring, but the monitoring object was usually enterprises, and the problems solved were partial. On July 1, 2015, the 14th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensive Deepening Reform deliberated and adopted the Environmental Protection Supervision Scheme (Trial) (hereinafter referred to as the Supervision Scheme), and took the places with outstanding environmental problems, frequent major environmental incidents and poor implementation of environmental protection responsibilities as the preliminary inspection targets.
The inspection work will be carried out in the form of the Central Environmental Protection Inspector Group. The inspection targets are provincial and municipal party committees and governments and their relevant departments, and will sink to some municipal party committees and government departments. Environmental protection inspectors emphasize that "the party and the government share the same responsibility" and "one post and two responsibilities", which means that local party committees accept supervision together with the government, and the inspection results serve as an important basis for the assessment and evaluation of the appointment and dismissal of leading cadres.
The commentary believes that the central environmental protection inspector has changed the traditional environmental supervision mode in China from inspecting enterprises to supervising government, which has become a major change.
Since the central environmental protection inspector started more than two years ago, various provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) have issued or revised more than 240 policies, regulations and system standards for ecological environmental protection, among which Shandong, Hainan, Sichuan and Tibet have issued documents to include environmental protection in the assessment and evaluation of cadres’ due diligence. All the 31 provinces that have conducted inspections have issued documents on the division of responsibilities for environmental protection, environmental protection supervision plans, and implementation measures for investigating the responsibility of leading cadres of the party and government for ecological environmental damage.
In 2018, the second round of central environmental protection inspectors will be launched soon. According to the preliminary plan, the "looking back" of the first round of inspectors will become the top priority in 2018. In addition, it will also guide local governments to establish a provincial-level environmental protection supervision system, realize the central and provincial-level supervision system and mechanism of the state supervising provinces and provinces supervising cities and counties, give play to the linkage effect of supervision, form a long-term mechanism of environmental protection supervision, and maintain the high-pressure situation of environmental protection.
From checking enterprises to supervising government.
In August 2017, the fourth batch of central environmental protection inspectors was launched, and eight central environmental protection inspectors were responsible for the inspectors stationed in Jilin, Zhejiang, Shandong, Hainan, Sichuan, Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang (including the Corps).
As in the past, before the launch, the media announced the names of the eight group leaders and deputy heads of this batch of inspectors, as well as the report phone numbers.
The eight team leaders are Jiao Huancheng, Wu Xinxiong, Ma Zhongping, Jia Zhibang, Zhu Zhixin, Jiang Jufeng, Yang Song and Li Jiaxiang. They all work in the National People’s Congress or Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and they are all provincial and ministerial officials. It is understood that the leader of the Central Environmental Protection Inspector Group generally meets the above two conditions. In addition, the officials themselves must be experienced and have a high theoretical level.
The deputy heads of these four batches and 31 groups are all in-service deputy ministers of the Ministry of Environmental Protection. It is understood that this is also the relevant regulations of the central environmental protection inspector.
Generally speaking, each central environmental protection inspector group usually has about 30 people. Except for the team leader and deputy team leader, the team members are basically from the corresponding area.
As a public institution of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, six inspection centers in East China, South China, Northwest China, Southwest China, Northeast China and North China have been established successively. The centers mainly undertake the functions of strengthening environmental protection supervision and law enforcement, responding to environmental emergencies and coordinating cross-provincial pollution disputes.
In 2017, the six inspection centers were renamed as inspection bureaus, and the institutions were changed into dispatched institutions of the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Among the institutional functions, the function of "undertaking the relevant work of the central environmental protection inspector" has been added.
Generally speaking, the members of different central environmental protection inspection teams are composed of the staff of the Supervision Bureau of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in the area according to the area where the inspected province belongs. When manpower is insufficient, manpower will also be transferred from the Ministry of Environmental Protection and other district supervision bureaus.
In addition, there is a general coordinator in the personnel composition. Generally speaking, the coordinator is generally served by the relevant leaders of the Supervision Bureau of the Ministry of Environmental Protection under the supervision province.
After the inspector group is stationed, it usually carries out a one-month central environmental protection inspector. Yu Guodong, member of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and deputy director of Chongqing Environmental Protection Bureau, told China Newsweek that in 2016, during the 30-day stay in Chongqing, the Fifth Environmental Protection Inspector Group of the Central Committee did not rest, including weekends.
The outside world believes that the central environmental protection inspector has realized the transformation from inspecting enterprises to supervising government, which is conducive to the implementation of the requirements of "party and government sharing responsibilities" and "one post and two responsibilities". The process of central environmental protection supervision is indeed closely related to supervision.
Liu Changgen, deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Supervision Office, once summarized the steps of the central environmental protection supervision into three stages when interviewed by the media.
The first stage is the provincial level inspector, which takes about ten days. Inspectors at the provincial level mainly carry out individual talks with provincial leaders and the main leaders of relevant departments at the provincial level, read the information of provincial party committees and governments and relevant departments, visit relevant departments mainly responsible for environmental protection, and accept letters and visits and reports. Through these methods, we can grasp the overall situation of environmental protection work in the province, focus on outstanding problems, and lay the foundation for the next inspector.
During the inspection in Hebei Province, the inspector group had individual talks with 26 provincial leaders, including the secretary of the provincial party committee and the governor, some provincial leaders who recently quit their leadership positions, and also the main leaders of the provincial high-level law and high-level inspection. The inspector group designed the conversation, and each question was highly targeted.
The questions include: what do you think are the main outstanding environmental problems in your province, where do you think the environmental problems are the most prominent, and the responsibilities are not in place. "Some leaders of relevant departments have targeted questions, such as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and some cases involving the elimination of backward production capacity may be questioned."
Yu Guodong, deputy director of Chongqing Environmental Protection Bureau, told China Newsweek that the inspector group had talked with the leaders of four teams and the top leaders of relevant departments in Chongqing to learn about the formulation of policies related to environmental protection and the implementation of their duties. "If you find a problem during the inspection, you will go back and talk to this person. In short, it is an in-depth investigation."
The second stage is the inspector of the sinking city. The sinking inspector is aimed at the problem clues sorted out by the inspector preparation and the provincial inspector, and sinks to some cities for investigation, evidence collection and verification. It mainly depends on whether these problems are true and where the responsibility lies. The time is also about ten days.
There are about a hundred clues to the problem, which are not only sorted out by provincial inspectors, but also prepared for inspectors. Most of these pre-prepared questions come from the daily understanding of the environmental problems in the provinces under the supervision of the Supervision Bureau, and some come from the clues of letters and visits received by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in the past.
Yu Guodong introduced that the clues held by the Supervision Bureau are often independent. Even when not in the period of central environmental protection supervision, the Supervision Bureau often goes directly to the cities to investigate relevant clues without going through the provincial environmental protection departments.
According to Liu Changgen, before the Central Environmental Protection Inspector Group was stationed, relevant personnel would make unannounced visits, find out the situation and find clues, and form a list of questions and a stationing manual.
In addition to these clues, during the inspection period, each inspector group set up a special duty telephone and post office box to receive letters and calls from the environmental protection department of the inspected province, and most of these problems were handed over to the environmental protection department of the province for solution.
Yu Guodong introduced that, generally speaking, incoming calls and reports will be handed over to the localities by the inspector group on the same day, and the local environmental protection departments will also hand them over on the same day according to the localities or departments involved in the problem and settle them within the specified time. Both the problem itself and the result of the treatment should be publicized. If the Central Environmental Protection Inspector Group has finished the inspection in this province, all incoming letters and calls must be handled with feedback within one week after the end.
It is understood that in the process of four batches of central environmental protection inspectors that have been completed, a total of 135,000 reports have been accepted by the masses, and some repeated cases have been removed. After the merger, 104,000 pieces have been handed over to the local authorities. As of October 2017, 102,000 pieces have been settled, and the settlement rate at that time exceeded 98%. About 80,000 of them are related to garbage, oil fume, odor, noise, enterprise pollution and black and odorous water problems.
Pan Biling, member of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and deputy director of Hunan Provincial Environmental Protection Department, told China Newsweek that in order to understand the deep-seated causes of these problems, the Hunan Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection took the lead in organizing six groups, which were responsible for the investigation and accountability of the responsibilities of the Party Committee and government and relevant departments behind the environmental problems reflected by different people during the stationing of the Central Environmental Protection Inspector Group.
hold sb accountable
The third stage of the inspector is to sort out, analyze and file. Liu Changgen said that on the one hand, it is to sort out the work in the first two stages and form some basic viewpoints and reporting frameworks. At the same time, according to needs, it is also possible to collect evidence for outstanding problems in unsinkable cities and carry out targeted supplementary inspections. In addition, the documents and materials involved in the work should be filed, and those returned should be returned and those taken away.
Generally speaking, the Central Environmental Protection Inspector Group will give feedback to the inspected provinces in a few months. The central environmental protection inspectors in Guangdong Province and Chongqing City were conducted from November to December 2016, and the feedback was received in April of the following year. The central environmental protection inspector in Hunan Province was conducted from April to May 2017, and the feedback was received in July of that year.
Liu Changgen mentioned that the inspector’s report focuses on sorting out problems and investigating cases of responsibility for ecological environmental damage. In general, 70% of each inspector’s report is about problems, 20% is about achievements, and 10% is about suggestions.
At present, the inspector reports received by all provinces have been made public. These inspectors’ reports are full of sharp words. For example, when the Central Fourth Environmental Protection Inspector Group gave feedback to Hainan Province, it pointed out that "some localities and departments in Hainan are complacent about the unique ecological environment in the province and blindly complacent, thinking that a good natural environment means a good job. Some cities and counties attach importance to economic development and neglect environmental protection, and are keen to engage in ‘ Short, flat and fast ’ The quick-acting performance project, the finance relies too much on real estate. "
The Ministry of Environmental Protection introduced at the press conference that four batches of environmental protection inspectors found six common problems in environmental protection in various provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities). First, the atmospheric and water environment problems in some areas are outstanding; Second, the construction of environmental governance infrastructure is seriously lagging behind; Third, some nature reserves are illegally approved and illegally built; Fourth, over-exploitation of water resources; Fifth, the problem of industrial pollution is still outstanding; Sixth, rural environmental problems are more prominent. "These problems are related to China’s development stage, and also have a lot to do with local party committees and governments’ lack of attention, inaction and responsibility."
According to the regulations, after receiving feedback, all provinces will study and formulate rectification plans and submit them to the State Council within 30 working days. The rectification plan and the implementation of rectification should be disclosed to the public in a timely manner.
Subsequently, the provinces detailed the problems pointed out by the inspector group one by one, listed the rectification measures, deadlines and objectives in detail, and also stipulated the members and responsible persons of the rectification leading group. According to Liu Changgen, about half of the provinces are headed by the main leaders of the party and government, and the rest are headed by the main leaders of the party Committee or government.
Relevant departments at all levels immediately formulated specific rectification plans, with the main leaders of the party and government as the first responsible person. These rectification plans are reported to the province for the record as the basis for rectification of sales numbers and dispatching evaluation. In order to supervise the progress of rectification, Hunan Province implemented the following measures: scheduling on January 1st, supervising on January 1st, informing on February 1st, and commenting on March 1st. If the rectification is not promoted effectively, the rectification work is not implemented properly, the progress is obviously lagging behind, and the problems are still outstanding, measures such as exposure, notification, interview, accountability, listing supervision, and regional approval restriction will be taken as appropriate.
According to the rectification plan of each province, the State Environmental Protection Inspector’s Office will follow up the rectification progress.
In addition to the rectification of related issues, a very important reason why the central environmental protection inspector is called "an imperial envoy for environmental protection" is that the inspector group will hold relevant personnel accountable. The inspector’s feedback received by Hunan Province also includes the list of issues of accountability for ecological environmental damage sorted out by the inspector group.
"The central environmental protection inspector is a comprehensive inspector, and it is ‘ Great environmental protection ’ The concept, so whether it is the environmental protection department or other departments, as long as they are dereliction of duty, they must be held accountable. " Liu Changgen said that the scope of accountability not only covers the insiders of the environmental protection system, but also includes local party and government, state-owned enterprises, grassroots communities, land, forestry, water conservancy, housing construction, agriculture, urban management, safety supervision, industrial credit, transportation, public security, development and reform, tourism and other departments related to environmental protection.
Accountability will undoubtedly play a deterrent role. The data shows that the first round of central environmental protection inspectors has filed a total of 29,000 cases to punish enterprises, with a fine of about 1.43 billion yuan; 1,518 cases were investigated and 1,527 people were detained; Interviewed 18,448 party and government leading cadres and held 18,199 accountable.
According to the deployment of the central government, in 2018, local governments will be guided to establish a provincial-level environmental protection supervision system, realize the central and provincial-level supervision system and mechanism of the state supervising provinces and provinces supervising cities and counties, give play to the linkage effect of supervision, form a long-term mechanism of environmental protection supervision, and maintain the high-pressure situation of environmental protection.
This is also related to the reform of the vertical management system of monitoring, supervision and law enforcement of environmental protection institutions below the provincial level.
In September 2016, the General Offices of the General Office of the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on the Pilot Reform of Vertical Management System for Monitoring, Supervision and Law Enforcement of Environmental Protection Institutions below the provincial level, which proposed that the environmental monitoring functions of environmental protection departments at the city and county levels should be taken over by the pilot provinces, which should be uniformly exercised by the provincial environmental protection departments, and environmental monitoring should be carried out through stationing in cities or across cities and counties.
The social environmental protection system has yet to be established.
At present, environmental protection inspectors have formed a trend of high pressure and normalization, but there are still some problems. To this end, the Central Committee of the Democratic Progressive Party put forward a party proposal on further strengthening and perfecting the central environmental protection inspector.
When talking about this proposal, Pan Biling, member of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and deputy director of the Hunan Provincial Environmental Protection Department, pointed out that, as proposed by the Democratic Progressive Party Central Committee, the composition of the central environmental protection inspector, except for the team leader, is all from the environmental protection system, which easily gives other departments the illusion that the central environmental protection inspector is still an environmental protection inspector, or at least can only be regarded as an environmental protection inspector under the leadership of the central government.
"When we cooperated with the central environmental protection inspector, some leaders of other departments told me that this was doing things for our environmental protection department. The central environmental protection inspector is the inspector of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council to the provincial party committees and governments, not the inspector of the Ministry of Environmental Protection to the provincial party committees and governments. However, due to the current situation of organizational structure, some people will have such misunderstandings. "
And it also raises the second question. Pan Biling believes that although one post and two responsibilities are emphasized at present, the relevant ministries and commissions such as the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Water Resources have not participated in supervision and supervision, and the sense of responsibility and pressure transmission of relevant local departments are not enough.
In addition, Pan Biling pointed out that at present, although many provinces have included environmental protection in the evaluation of cadres’ due diligence, 31 provinces that have conducted inspections have introduced implementation measures for investigating the responsibility of party and government leading cadres for ecological environmental damage, but these evaluation systems are still limited.
"Some cadres may think that this has little impact, but only appropriate deduction points are assessed, which is not a one-vote veto. There are still relatively few cases that really have an impact on the use of leading cadres. After all, this kind of accountability has not yet caused widespread pain. "
In addition, another member from Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, who did not want to be named and had participated in the Central Environmental Protection Inspector, suggested that the more important issue was how to fundamentally solve environmental problems.
At present, party and government leaders at all levels have paid unprecedented attention to environmental protection, promoted it and produced results, but how to consolidate the achievements and carry out it in a long-term and institutionalized way is a difficult problem.
Pan Biling believes that there is a new formalism, which implements documents with documents and meetings with meetings. "The problem of people’s complaints can be solved in a week or half a month. But this solution is short-term. Environmental pollution control can’t be solved just by implementing responsibilities. In the long run, it must rely on funds and project management. This requires the government to increase investment, but it is not enough to rely on the government alone. It also requires the participation of enterprises and even the whole society. "
At present, there is a great pressure on environmental governance funds at the grassroots level. "In many places, it is very good to guarantee the basic livelihood, and there is no spare money for environmental protection. It is not enough to implement responsibilities and convey pressure at all levels. " He suggested that the government should continue to increase the proportion of capital investment in environmental protection.
Yu Guodong also said that many places are facing the adjustment of industrial structure because of environmental pollution. This requires the cooperation of various government departments, guiding the development of green industries in this region, giving subsidies in funds, giving support in policies, and even coordinating and bridging the gap between local governments.
In addition, Pan Biling also pointed out that environmental pollution is not only caused by enterprises, but also by everyone. For example, driving, eating barbecue, setting off firecrackers and fireworks, and even daily life may all cause the discharge of waste gas and wastewater.
However, some environmentalists pointed out that for the people, there should be good schools and public hospitals next to the new real estate, but there should be no garbage disposal facilities and sewage treatment facilities. When the real estate is sold, it is afraid to publicize that there are such facilities around. During the construction, the people complained or directly asked to stop work. There is indeed a big gap in the facilities in China.
It can be said that the environmental protection system of the whole social system has not been fully established. Pan Biling believes that China must make great changes in the system and mechanism, capital investment and other aspects, and the improvement of environmental quality can achieve remarkable results.
China Newsweek, No.10, 2018
